A Lifeline for Students in Persistently Failing Public Schools

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EDUCATION NOTEBOOK: A Lifeline for Students in Persistently Failing Public
Schools

July 19, 2006

Millions of students are trapped in
persistently failing public schools. On Tuesday, Education
Secretary Margaret Spellings joined congressional Republicans to
unveil the America's Opportunity Scholarships initiative-a plan to
give thousands of these at-risk children a chance to receive a
quality education.

The Opportunity Scholarships initiative would provide $100 million
in grants to local organizations that would grant scholarships to
low-income public school students to attend private school or to
receive intensive after-school tutoring. To be eligible, a child
must be enrolled in a public school that has missed state
benchmarks for six or more years under No Child Left Behind.
According to the Department of Education, more than a thousand
schools qualified in 2005, and another thousand could join this
list in the fall.

Hundreds of thousands of children are trapped in low-performing
public schools, including many in our nation's largest school
districts. In New York, 125,000 students are enrolled in public
schools that have failed for six or more years. In Los Angeles,
170,000 students attend persistently failing schools. In cities
like Chicago (121,000), Philadelphia (63,000), Detroit (26,000),
and Baltimore (22,000), tens of thousands of children are enrolled
in persistently failing public schools and are missing the chance
to receive a quality education.

The America's Opportunity Scholarships for Kids initiative would
help rescue about 28,000 students from bad schools. The legislation
would enable the Department of Education to award grants to create
scholarship programs-like those in Milwaukee and Washington,
D.C.-in ten cities. Research on existing tuition scholarship
programs has found that school choice boosts parents' satisfaction
and improves participating students' test scores.

In a speech on Capitol Hill, Secretary Spellings explained that
the Opportunity Scholarship initiative was designed to hold public
schools accountable to parents for performance. "Accountability is
hollow without real options for parents," she said. "President Bush
and I believe that families in communities where schools fall short
deserve choices when it comes to their children's education."

Republican lawmakers in Congress back the plan. Senators Lamar
Alexander (R-TN) and John Ensign (R-NV) are sponsoring the bill in
the Senate. Education Committee Chairman Rep. Buck McKeon (R-CA)
and Rep. Sam Johnson (R-TX) offered legislation in the House.

Whether the proposal will draw bipartisan support is an open
question. In 2003, prominent Democrats on Capitol Hill, including
Senators Robert Byrd (D-WV), Diane Feinstein (D-CA), and Joseph
Lieberman (D-CA) and Rep. Harold Ford (D-TN) backed a school choice
program for children in Washington, D.C. This year, state-level
school choice programs have been created or expanded in Arizona,
Iowa, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin with support from
Democrats.

Even the fiercest partisans may have trouble opposing the new
Opportunity Scholarship initiative. After all, what politicians
would want to deny a student from a low-income family trapped in a
school that has failed for six or more years the opportunity to
attend a quality school? Democrats will have to answer to their own
constituents, many of whom live in these large urban school
districts and want new options for their children.

The downside is that the proposal would help
only 28,000 of the millions of students in low-performing schools.
But it would be another critical step toward demonstrating how
school choice programs can benefit families, paving the way for
future student-centered reforms at the local, state, and federal
levels to give all families the opportunity to choose their
children's school.

But for the parents of children trapped in America's worst public
schools, the broader policy implications aren't the top concern.
They just want their children to have the opportunity to learn in a
quality classroom. The Opportunity Scholarship initiative would
provide just that opportunity.

Dan Lips is an Education
Analyst and Evan Feinberg is a Research Assistant at the Heritage
Foundation, www.Heritage.org.